Catholic missionaries played an important role in the colonial scramble in Africa and the subsequent years. They served as educators and medical support for the state in many cases. The state relied on missionaries to staff schools, educate the population, and aid in the civilization of the Africans. In the Belgian Congo, Catholic missionaries - specifically the Society of Missionaries of Africa or White Fathers - played an especially important role as agents of evangelization and European civilization. The Belgian state relied heavily (and provided subsidies) on missionaries to educate the native people. Through education and medical help, missionaries fostered conversions and attempted to establish a native Church in Africa. Using mission diaries, personal correspondence, annual reports, and personal interviews (conducted in fall 2008), as well as secondary sources, I will attempt to construct a picture of the White Fathers and their experiences during the colonial period and subsequent decades, but with special focus on the years 1950-1955. I will examine the White Fathers as an institution and look at the relationships within the Society and those among the Society, the Belgian regime, and private companies. Through personal interviews with missionaries stationed in the Belgian Congo and Burundi during the 1950s, I will look at these individuals experiences and lives to better understand the Society as a whole and its role in imperial Africa. Though there are few secondary sources about the White Fathers in Africa, the primary sources I accessed in Rome and Brussels were very rich. While there are some drawbacks to using oral interviews as primary sources, I believe the interviews provided invaluable data about the daily lives of Catholic missionaries in the field in Congo.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LSU/oai:etd.lsu.edu:etd-11102009-113627 |
| Date | 10 November 2009 |
| Creators | Rountree, Kathryn |
| Contributors | Marchand, Suzanne, Lindenfeld, David, Cole, Gibril |
| Publisher | LSU |
| Source Sets | Louisiana State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/available/etd-11102009-113627/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached herein a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to LSU or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below and in appropriate University policies, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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